from 0 review
14 days
Daily Tour
Unlimited
English, Francais
This is a journey through Benin, Togo and Ghana, timed so you are in Ouidah for the main ceremonies of Vodun Days, the annual Voodoo festival. You will see the dances, the costumes and the rituals, and learn what they mean from the people who keep them.
Around the festival you will visit royal palaces, a village built on stilts, craft workshops and the slave castles of the Ghanaian coast. The same vehicle, driver and guide travel with you from Cotonou to Accra.
The pace is comfortable. Four nights on one base in Cotonou mean the Benin days are run as day trips, with your bags left in the room.
Welcome to Benin. On arrival at Cotonou Cadjehoun International Airport you are met by your guide, who will stay with you for the whole journey, and transferred to your hotel. After you have checked in and had time to freshen up, your guide will meet you for a short orientation on the journey ahead through Benin, Togo and Ghana. The rest of the evening is at leisure. Your guide will point out a foreign exchange bureau at the airport. You can ask for one at any time during the tour.
Hotel : Golden Tulip Diplomate
After breakfast, drive to Porto Novo, the official capital of Benin (approximately 1 hour). Many Afro-Brazilian families settled here after returning from Brazil in the nineteenth century, and their architecture still shapes the old colonial town. Walk through the market, see the Great Mosque, built in the Brazilian church style, and visit the Royal Palace of King Toffa, now a museum of the kingdom of Porto Novo. Lunch is at your own expense. In the afternoon, return to Cotonou for a city tour: the Esplanade des Amazones with its great statue of an Agojie warrior, Remembrance Square, the Mathieu Kerekou Garden, the Bio Guera Monument to the Wassangari warrior, and Martyrs’ Square. Dinner in Cotonou.
Meal(s) Included : Breakfast, Dinner
Hotel : Golden Tulip Diplomate
Today is the heart of the journey. Drive to Ouidah (approximately 1 hour), former slave trading port and the historic birthplace of Vodun, for the main day of Vodun Days, the annual Voodoo festival. Traditional leaders, priests and devotees from across Benin and the region gather here, and the streets fill with drumming, dancing, processions and chanting. Among the highlights are Zangbeto performances, by the traditional guardians of protection and community security, and Egungun ceremonies, which honor the ancestors with elaborate costumes, music and dance. Your guide will explain the meaning of each ceremony you see. You may also be received by Daagbo Hounon, the supreme chief of Vodun, subject to his availability. Between ceremonies, visit the Sacred Forest of Kpasse, the Temple of the Pythons and the Cathedral that faces it, a vivid picture of Vodun and Christianity side by side. Walk the four-kilometer Route des Esclaves, past Place Chacha, where captives were auctioned, the Tree of Forgetfulness, Zomai House and the Zoungbodji Memorial, the common grave of those who died before boarding, to the Door of No Return on the beach. Dinner is in Ouidah before the return to Cotonou in the early evening.
Meal(s) Included : Breakfast, Dinner
Hotel : Golden Tulip Diplomate
Early this morning, drive to the shore of Lake Nokoue and take a boat across the lake to Ganvie, the "African Venice." Around 20,000 people live here in houses on stilts, with floating markets, fish farms and a whole community life lived on the water. Continue to Abomey (approximately 2 hours 15 minutes), capital of the Kingdom of Dahomey. Visit the Royal Palaces of Abomey, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, whose bas-reliefs record the history of twelve kings. See the royal thrones, weapons and regalia of the Historical Museum, and the Royal Sepulchers. Learn about the Agojie, the women soldiers of Dahomey. You may also have the chance to meet the King of Abomey, subject to his availability. Return to Cotonou (approximately 2 hours 30 minutes) for dinner.
Meal(s) Included : Breakfast, Dinner
Hotel : Golden Tulip Diplomate
After breakfast and checkout, drive west along the coast and cross into Togo near Aneho (approximately 2 hours 30 minutes including the border). At Agbodrafo, visit the Wood Home slave house, where captives were hidden after the slave trade was abolished. Take a boat across Lake Togo to Togoville, the red-earth village where the treaty that created German Togoland was signed in 1884. See its Voodoo shrines and fetishes, and sample herbal teas with the village herbalist. Continue to Lome (approximately 1 hour) for a panoramic tour of Togo’s capital: Independence Square, the fishing harbor and the Akodessewa Fetish Market, the largest market of its kind in West Africa. Dinner at the hotel.
Meal(s) Included : Breakfast, Dinner
Hotel : Hotel Sancta Maria
Head north into the Togolese countryside to the rural village of Davedi. Spend time with the villagers and their daily life and learn the Bobo dance from the women of the village. Witness a twin dolls ceremony. In Ewe tradition, twins are sacred, and a carved figure is kept and cared for in honor of each twin. Continue to Atakpame (approximately 2 hours 45 minutes from Lome), a hill town and weaving center, to watch kente cloth woven in the Togolese tradition. Lunch is at your own expense. Return to Lome for dinner.
Meal(s) Included : Breakfast, Dinner
Hotel : Hotel Sancta Maria
After breakfast and checkout, cross into Ghana at Aflao and follow the coast past Ewe fishing villages, lagoons and palm groves. At Vume on the Volta River (approximately 2 hours 30 minutes including the border), visit the pottery village and watch the women potters shape clay entirely by hand, without a wheel. Continue to Accra (approximately 2 hours 30 minutes), arriving in the early evening. Dinner at the hotel.
Meal(s) Included: Breakfast, Dinner
Hotel : Pelican Hotel
Full day in Accra. Begin at the W.E.B. Du Bois Centre, the home where the African American scholar and Pan-Africanist spent his final years. Drive along the principal streets past Flagstaff House, the seat of the presidency. Visit the newly renovated Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, resting place of Ghana’s first president, with its museum and presidential library, then Independence Square, where the liberation flame was lit in 1961, the Independence Arch and Black Star Square. Lunch is at your own expense. In the afternoon, browse the Accra Arts and Crafts Centre for kente, carvings and beads, with the chance to practice your bargaining. Finish in Teshie, where master carpenters build the famous fantasy coffins in the shape of fish, cars, animals and more. Dinner in Accra.
Meal(s) Included: Breakfast, Dinner
Hotel : Pelican Hotel
After breakfast and checkout, drive west along the coast. Stop at the old quarter of Mankessim (approximately 2 hours 30 minutes) to see the Posuban shrines, the colorful sculpted shrines of the Fante warrior companies. Continue to Elmina (approximately 1 hour) and visit Elmina Castle, St. George’s Castle, built by the Portuguese in 1482. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the oldest European building in sub-Saharan Africa. Afterward, walk through the harbor below the castle, full of brightly painted fishing boats, and watch the boat builders at work using methods handed down for centuries. Check in and have dinner at the hotel in Cape Coast.
Meal(s) Included: Breakfast, Dinner
Hotel : Ridge Royal Hotel
Visit Cape Coast Castle, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Walk through the dungeons to the Door of No Return, and see the castle museum, which tells the story of the Gold Coast and the transatlantic slave trade. Return to Elmina for the Elmina Fish Market, the largest in the region, and learn how the catch is landed, sold and prepared. This evening, dinner with a performance of traditional African music and dance.
Meal(s) Included: Breakfast, Dinner
Hotel : Ridge Royal Hotel
After breakfast and checkout, drive north to Assin Manso (approximately 1 hour) and the Slave River, "Donkor Nsuo," where captives were given their last bath before the march to the coast. Two formerly enslaved Africans, from the United States and Jamaica, were reburied here in 1998. Continue through the forest zone to Kumasi (approximately 3 hours), seat of the Ashanti Kingdom. Visit the Manhyia Palace Museum, former residence of the Asantehene, with its royal relics and artifacts. Dinner at the hotel.
Meal(s) Included: Breakfast, Dinner
Hotel: Lancaster Kumasi City Hotel
After a leisurely breakfast, spend the day in the Ashanti craft villages around Kumasi. At Bonwire, watch weavers at work on kente cloth, once reserved for Ashanti royalty. At Ntonso, learn the meaning of the adinkra symbols and stamp your own adinkra sash to take home. At Ahwiaa, meet the woodcarvers who make stools, drums and fertility figures. Back in Kumasi, visit the National Cultural Centre, where artisans work in brass, pottery and batik, and the Prempeh II Jubilee Museum of Ashanti history. Dinner at the hotel.
Meal(s) Included: Breakfast, Dinner
Hotel: Lancaster Kumasi City Hotel
After breakfast and checkout, return to Accra (approximately 5 hours), arriving in the late afternoon. The rest of the day is at leisure. Farewell dinner.
Meal(s) Included: Breakfast, Dinner
Hotel : Pelican Hotel
After breakfast, the day is at leisure until your transfer to Accra International Airport for your flight home. Your driver and guide are available if you would like to explore more of Accra before your flight.
Meal(s) Included: Breakfast In-flight
Member Since 2021
